Vitter Likens FDA Recommendation to Death Panels

WASHINGTON (AP) - Reviving allegations of government deathpanels, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana said Wednesday that an FDAadvisory panel's negative recommendation on a contested breastcancer drug amounts to rationing health care. "I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning avalue to a day of a person's life," Vitter said in a press releaseabout the drug Avastin. "It is sickening to think that care wouldbe withheld from a patient simply because their life is not deemedvaluable enough." While he did not use the term "death panels," his complaintmirrors false allegations raised last year by Republicans such asformer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who claimed the Democratic healthcare bill included "death panels" that would decide who deservestreatment and who doesn't. Vitter, who is up for re-election, called on the FDA to rejectthe panel's recommendation, saying it appears to have been based oncost effectiveness. But the FDA and its advisory panels don't consider costeffectiveness when reviewing drugs for approval; the agency ischarged only with reviewing a product's health risks and benefits. An independent panel of cancer experts convened by FDA voted12-1 last week to recommend dropping the agency's endorsement ofAvastin's use against breast cancer. The panel cited recent studiesfinding that the drug did not extend patients' life spans and alsoincreased the incidence of side effects and other complications. "We have definitive evidence that Avastin causes harmful sideeffects and we've now seen a number of well-done studies that showno advantage to lifespan," panel chair Dr. Wyndham Wilson of theNational Cancer Institute said at the time of the vote. Avastin - a blockbuster cancer drug that had $5.9 billion insales last year for drug maker Roche - is also approved for colon,lung, kidney and brain cancer. The panel's recommendation pertainsonly to its use in breast cancer, for which it was givenconditional approval in 2008. FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley said the agency was stillconsidering the panel's recommendation and will make a decisionbased on safety and effectiveness. The agency usually follows suchrecommendations, but not always. Vitter recently embraced another debunked claim pushed by somecritics of President Barack Obama, saying that he supports lawsuitscontesting Obama's citizenship. He later said he does notpersonally question the president's Hawaiian birth certificate.